


Icebox - We'll Make It

by SomberCitizen



Series: Boxes [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 17:36:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomberCitizen/pseuds/SomberCitizen





	Icebox - We'll Make It

My name is Dmitri Yusupovich Safin. Dima for short. That’s what  _ she _ calls me when she’s smiling. The rest I can only tell through old documents and her stories. I don’t remember much.

 

I remember a cold town, near a river. It says I was born there, in Yakutsk, in the early summer. My father, Yusuf, was a writer. My mother, Adelina - a painter. I used to love painting too, wanted to be an artist before I became a soldier. At least that’s what she says.  _ “You used to love painting nature.” _ . I tried to do it recently, maybe it would help me remember, but the pencil point broke and tore the paper. Maybe I’m not just there yet.

 

I used to have a brother. I remember his eyes, dark like mine, and always smiling. She says we weren't really related, and I see his name is different than mine and his profile says he was born elsewhere to other parents, but sometimes when I laugh I can feel him in my blood. And it hurts like all the rest of the phantom pains that plague me. His name was Ararat, like the mountain, the volcano and if you’d known him, you’d know just how much the name fit. He was the first thing I remembered. I miss him like I miss my natural heartbeat.

 

We grew up together. In that mountain my grandmother took us to, when the Crisis hit and swept Yakuts under a constant dust cloud, burring mine and Ararat’s parents under the ruins. We lived there for years, before the two of us, Ari and I, joined the army. She says I met my first girlfriend there, her name was Tatyana. Ginger hair and freckles and eyes greener than unripened wheat. I think I remember her, faintly. She didn’t want to love a soldier, so she left me when I became one. She says I loved her a lot.

 

Maybe it was for the best she left me. I did meet  _ her  _ because of my broken heart. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe if I had tried to go back to Tatyana and not followed  _ her _ I wouldn’t have ended up like this. She says we met after her mother died and I can see it so vividly. Brunette girl, crying and holding a rifle. That’s her. Lyudmila. We fought side by side, lived through the war and married. She took my name then. Lyudmila Safina. She doesn’t call herself that anymore. She’s not a brunette anymore either. The path I followed with her changed us both.

 

It says on the documents I was a captain in the Russian special forces. I lead a team of trained soldiers, Vector Squad, into many missions. I see those missions, marked successful, on the papers. Magadan, Kazan, Pripyat.. I remember some of them. The girl who made me lose my temper, our medic who always pulled us through the worst. Ararat was there too. My brother. Bigger than life itself. Whenever those memories strike his laughter always fills the hallways of that half-remembered base. 

 

Then we died. An explosion by a river, near that old Omnium in the tundra. Lyudmila is the only one that fully survived it. I’ve asked her about it, many times, but I think I should stop. Her eyes turn so hollow whenever she speaks of what happened there. She says it was her mistake, that she overlooked the bomb, but I don’t think it was. I was supposed to lead that team. I should’ve known better. Maybe after all the years of success it had went to my head. Maybe I had gotten cocky. I don’t remember much of who I was back then, but that hollowness seems to catch me too whenever I try to recall the circumstances of my death.

  
  


I didn’t really die by that river. Not fully at least. But parts of me did. The memories that followed, are the ones that came back the clearest. The empty concrete room, the projections on the gray wall, the weeks of starving and then the feeding tubes. I remember screaming at them, the people in the lab coats until my throat felt like fire. I remember promising them death. I remember promising them a bullet from Lyudmila. I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want this hatred. But their faces.. They were what I saw when vengeance first entered my heart. They made me break my promise.

 

I had vowed to protect her, to never do anything to hurt her but I did. They sent me after her, after Lyudmila and I’ve seen the scars that I left that night. I want to say I wasn’t myself, but that’s what they always say, isn’t it? Part of me is afraid to touch her with these hands. I know she’s not fragile, but the memory of her looking at me as I tried to hurt her haunts me. Those eyes, I don’t recall ever seeing her this scared. She was always so fearless, but when my mask fell, she looked so scared. Of all the memories I’ve lost, those are the ones I least want back. 

 

Now I’m here. And so is she, and her friends as well and they feel like a family. Like the one we had back then. Sometimes I can see the ghosts of Vector among them. Sometimes I can hear Ararat’s laugh in someone else’s jokes and it hurts to know, it was my mistake that silenced it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the person who laughed beside him again. Lyudmila says I don’t have to be, but I want to. For her. I had promised those people in lab coats that she’ll find me and she did. She did find me and I’ll find myself for her. We promised each other that if we survived the war, we’ll spend the rest of our lives together. I am not much myself anymore, neither is she, but we are together. We have grown old without each other, but she is next to me now. So maybe there’s still time for us to make it till the end. I am remembering more and more every day. 

 

Maybe there really is hope for us to be happy again. 

  
  



End file.
